June 8th, 2007:

U.S. General George Patton (Wikimedia)

Saturday, June 9, 2007. Issue 3675. Page 1.
By Max Delany
Staff Writer   
 
From the beaches of Normandy to the wilds of Sakhalin, sometimes we all need a little pep talk.

But a leaked e-mail from a top Sakhalin Energy executive, exhorting his pipeline engineers in the style of U.S. General George Patton, has prompted one international newspaper to ask its readers, “Is this the worst motivational memo ever?”

In the memo, deputy CEO David Greer borrows heavily from Patton, lifting whole passages of a bloodcurdling speech delivered by the gung-ho World War II general to his troops on the eve of D-Day, in 1944. read more

08 Jun 2007 
MOSCOW (AFP)

British-Dutch oil major Shell plans to increase investments in Russia despite losing control of the giant Sakhalin-2 project earlier this year, the company’s CEO said in an interview published on Friday.

“If we see other opportunities for setting up offshore joint ventures, then we will look at them without a doubt,” Jeroen van der Veer said in an interview with the Kommersant daily.

Shell was the operator of Sakhalin-2, one of the biggest private oil and gas projects in the world, but was forced to sell to state-run gas giant Gazprom in April after coming under pressure from Russian authorities. read more

The Current Crisis

By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
Published 6/7/2007 12:08:27 AM

WASHINGTON — Who are the major producers of oil in the world? The unsettling answer is Saudi Arabia and Russia. They produce about 9 million barrels of oil a day. And who are the world’s major producers of natural gas. Again the answer is unsettling, Iran and Russia. There are students of geopolitics with a special knowledge of energy resources who worry about this. One, the economist Philip K. Verleger, Jr., believes that with regard to Russia and its energy reserves, we are in the second round of the Cold War. read more

Nigerian militants have been responsible for kidnappings

Britons have been advised by the UK government to leave three states in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta.

In updates to travel advice on the Foreign Office website, citizens were warned that Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers States are unsafe.

The site states this is because of the very high risk of kidnapping, armed robbery and other armed attacks.

A Briton was one of four foreign oil workers kidnapped in Port Harcourt, capital of Rivers State, last week. read more

Russia is about to rule on whether to confiscate TNK-BP’s giant Kovykta gas field. Mary Dejevsky considers whether the game is up for Western oil companies in Russia

Published: 08 June 2007

Some time in the next few weeks, once the Group of Eight summit in Germany is safely out of the way, Russia’s energy regulators will announce whether they intend to revoke the production licence granted to BP for the Kovykta gas field in east Siberia. Few are optimistic about BP’s prospects of hanging on to it. read more

By Henry Meyer

June 8 (Bloomberg) — Global executives including Coca-Cola Co. President Muhtar Kent and Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s Jeroen van der Veer will seek to expand operations in Russia this weekend, shrugging off concerns about worsening relations with the West.

The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum beginning today may result in agreements worth $3.3 billion, the Russian government says, and includes a guest list of 200 leaders from among the world’s biggest companies. Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president, will address the forum in the home city of Russian President Vladimir Putin. read more

(Linda Cook and al-Attiyah signing the MoU for joint ventures)

THE HAGUE: Qatar Petroleum International (QPI) a wholly-owned subsidiary of Qatar’s state-owned Qatar Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell yesterday signed A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at identifying and developing international projects of mutual interest throughout the energy chain.

The MoU was signed on behalf of QPI by HE the Deputy Premier and Energy and Industry Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah and by Linda Cook, executive director of Royal Dutch Shell. Attending the signing ceremony were Nasser al-Jaidah, CEO of QPI, and Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive of Shell. read more

(Alf Harald Paulsen is among the former refinery workers who has developed cancer, and he blames Shell. PHOTO: PÅL CHRISTENSEN / STAVANGER AFTENBLAD)

An unusually high number of people who worked at or lived near the old Shell refinery outside Stavanger have developed cancer in recent years. Several have already died, so now the country’s leading cancer research agency is launching an investigation, with Shell footing the bill.

For 33 years, Shell operated a refinery at Kolnes, just north of the airport area at Sola. It was shut down in 2000 and after it was dismantled, a massive clean-up of the site began. It’s now being redeveloped as a new commercial real estate project. read more

From John Donovan: Friday 08 June 2007

Dear Mr Arkesteijn

For the record I am not a former Shell employee. I did act as a marketing consultant to Shell for many years and devised and supplied many successful promotions to Shell on an international basis.

We fell out because under a new management, Shell thought it could steal with impunity ideas I had put forward on a confidential basis. I have sued Shell many times in the High Court and have never lost a case against them. 

During the course of the litigation Shell admitted the use of undercover agents who engaged in deception and fraud in an attempt to intimate my family and me. We caught one such agent red-handed at our offices examining our mail. He presented fake documents to our reception staff and claimed to represent a company which did not in fact exist. By coincidence or otherwise, my own home, the homes of my solicitor and a key witness were all burgled and Shell discovery documents tampered with. We also had to put up with a campaign of intimidation led personally by the then Shell Chairman, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, who made threats in a letter he sent to me. In 2005, Shell issued proceedings in an attempt to seize the domain name for this website, but lost the case. read more

Friday 8 June 2007
From Eric Arkesteijn – a Shell-SEIC employee

Mr. John,

I guess you are having good fun in your ivory tower getting all kind of e-mails from disappointed people and dropping it on the web to see what impact this has on SEIC and Shell.

While probably every company in the world has its issues, only one disappointed ex-staff (wasn’t it John?) took the bad decision to spit his venom on the web.

You have become the voice of people who’s ideas were not listened to, were overruled, neglected (often for good reasons) and instead of taking the sack they blow whistles. read more

Sobrina Rosli
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN
08-Jun-07

THE Suri Seri Begawan Hospital in Kuala Belait will soon acquire a new ambulance courtesy of the Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) Company’s $250,000 donation.

Zainal Abidin Mohd Ali, BSP deputy managing director, handed the mock cheque to Yusof Amba, deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Health at a ceremony held at the ministry’s offices yesterday.

The contribution will also be used to purchase a bed-side vital sign monitor and a mannequin for basic life support training purposes. read more

EXTRACT: This week, Putin described another new energy contract, which gave Shell control of the massive Sakhalin energy project, as a “colonial treaty” and said the Russian officials who agreed to it should be “have been put in prison”.

Published: Jun 08, 2007

Investors aren’t feeling the chill of a new cold war, at least for the moment, despite threats of an arms race and a growing political rift between Russia and the West, writes Conor Sweeney in Moscow

There are few signs the business climate has started to follow the downward spiral in diplomatic relations between the Kremlin and both the EU and the US, although there are fears it may be close behind. read more

By David Bowen

G8 summits are fascinating for webwatchers. Two years ago it was fun seeing radical dissenters running online rings round the establishment as it gathered at Gleneagles. This week at Heiligendamm they are at it again – more sophisticated than ever. Yet the balance of power seems to be changing, with the NGOs elbowing the radicals off the screen. What does it all mean?

For many years protest movements have held sway on the web. Big Business discovered that to its cost in 1996, when Greenpeace used its site to outmanoeuvre Shell as the oil group attempted to dump the Brent Spar platform. Since then radical organisations have treated the web as their own playground, and have also used it very effectively as an organisational tool. The anti-globalisation protests this week and in the last few years could never have reached their scale without the internet. read more

By Washington
Published: June 8 2007 03:00 | Last updated: June 8 2007 03:00

As an intercontinental ballistic missile soared on a test flight from Russia’s Plesetsk cosmodrome last week, the ghosts of the cold war seemed to stir. Within days, President Vladimir Putin was calling the test a direct response to US plans to build a missile “shield” in central Europe – and warning foreign reporters that if the US went ahead, Russia would once again target nuclear missiles at Europe. read more

By Stephen Fidler and Michael Peel
Published: June 8 2007 03:00 | Last updated: June 8 2007 03:00

An opaque series of contracts dating back to 1985 lies at the heart of the controversy about payments made by BAE Systems in connection with Britain’s biggest ever defence deal.

The contracts covered the purchase and maintenance of Tornado warplanes, Hawk training aircraft and other defence equipment worth £43bn under a deal named Al-Yamamah, Arabic for dove.

Al-Yamamah is covered by government-to-government contracts between Saudi Arabia and Britain, which the British government and BAE insist are confidential. read more